The first time I heard this story I thought that Segal had been talking about the importance of _not_ wearing socks in the marathon just as Cierpinksi entered the stadium in his white socks.
Avocados Number wrote:
skwilli wrote:"The winner of this race will be wearing socks." "Expert" commentary from the author of Love Story at the 1976 Marathon, because it was raining. Erich Segal ran a 4 hour marathon or so back in the sixties, so he was an expert commentator for the race! Struck me as quite ludicrous at the time, and it still does. Does anyone remember if Waldemar Cierpinski was wearing socks?
Cierpinski did, in fact, wear socks -- white ones. So Segal was right. He was, however, unqualified to provide television commentary for the distance races at those Olympics. The one comment that I remember from Segal was his irresponsible accusation that Viren was engaged in blood doping.